after secretary panetta left the city. the taliban are claiming responsibility for that. cnn's erin burnett is in afghanistan, where she had an exclusive interview with the secretary of defense, leon panetta. erin, what did the secretary say about the security situation there, especially in light of what happened right after he left. >> reporter: yeah, i mean, kate, it was pretty amazing. we were in kandahar today with the defense secretary, and it was about two hours after we left when this suicide bomber from the taliban struck at the entrance to the kandahar airfield, where we had been. the timing, as you say, very tough for the united states, which has been trying to say, look, we've been successful. we've made progress, we've made progress training afghan forces, we've made progress training the sources. general abrams told me, look, they specifically said they failed to attack the kandahar airfield. two hours later, they succeeded in doing so, even though it was just at the perimeter, which i think is important to me